Accounting professionalization, the state, and transnational capitalism: The case of Iran

We examine accounting professionalization in Iran to understand state-controlled adaptation of Iran’s professional accounting organization in response to transnational pressure. Using a neo-Gramscian theory of hegemony, the study shows that Iran’s accounting occupation as an element of civil society was re-constituted through the interplay of shifting state ideology and transnational capitalism over the past five decades. The state’s desire to integrate Iran with the global financial system in recent decades drove changes to Iran’s accounting professional organization for alignment with transnational norms. The adaptation occurred amidst local resistance to transnational preference for granting regulatory powers to an autonomous professional accounting body. The study highlights professional autonomy as a contested ideational site of struggle in this process. The state preserved standard setting authority within the state apparatus, granted statutory audit and professional certification powers to an ideologically-trusted professional body, and relegated an accounting association construed as espousing neoliberal ideology to the politically less sensitive responsibility of offering professional education. We interpret this regulatory role specialization of the occupational groups as a product of the state’s selective co-optation of the groups on ideological grounds. The study highlights the role of a country’s ideological distance from neoliberalism in shaping adaptation of regulatory institutions for alignment to transnational norms.